u/AlexOFyle

I've received two novated lease quotes for a used EV, both with a 5-year length:

1. A fully-managed lease from Maxxia, with a rate of 12.3% (down from an initial 13.77%!)
2. A self-managed lease from Novated Lease Australia (NLA), with a rate of 9.5% (down from 9.95%). Since Maxxia is my employer's preferred provider, NLA would secure the initial finance and then pass the lease onto Maxxia.

For added context, the car is a MY24 Polestar 2 with a driveaway cost of ~$42K (worth ~$74K new). My salary is just shy of $100K, and I have considerable emergency funds (situated in a mortgage offset account). Importantly, I can walk away from this car if the finances don't appeal to me.

To buy the car alone (including the residual, but not factoring in running costs and extras), I've calculated that these leases would result in out-of-pocket costs (EDIT: overall impacts to my wealth, accounting for tax savings) of around $48K (Maxxia) and $38K (NLA). The deductions for running costs seem reasonable enough, and I won't be opting for any non-essential insurances.

Obviously I'm not happy at all with Maxxia's rate, and some quick research suggests that even NLA's 9.5% is borderline uncompetitive (despite them suggesting that it was 'near their lowest' when I tried to barter them down). Still, at this point I'm obviously leaning towards NLA as that would save me roughly $4K on the price of the car overall, not including the mortgage interest savings from keeping the money in my offset account.

Questions:

• What's reasonable, and how can I get a better deal?
• Is a self-managed lease actually worth the additional admin, and what does that look like in practice?
• Any other advice?

New to this, so all help appreciated. 👍